Talk Left points to this Boston Globe article, which reports that, on the Court of Appeals, Judge Samuel Alito refused or neglected to recuse himself from appellate cases where he had personal connections or interests.

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., who said in 1990 that he would disqualify himself from cases involving his sister's law firm, was a member of an appeals court that reviewed a 1995 case in which his sister's firm represented one of the parties, according to court records.

It is at least the third instance in which there is no indication the Supreme Court nominee recused himself from the kind of case he had promised a Senate committee he would avoid as a federal judge.

The news of the case, which had not been reported previously, comes one day after two Democratic senators said they wanted more answers to conflict-of-interests questions about Alito's involvement in cases regarding Vanguard and Smith Barney -- investment firms Alito had accounts with.

When judges are supposed to be impartial, these kinds of instances certainly should raise some questions. What would have been the harm if Alito simply had recused himself?

In his questionnaire, provided to the Senate during his confirmation hearings as an appeals court judge, Samuel Alito cited four types of cases in which he would disqualify himself to avoid a potential conflict of interest: those involving Vanguard, in which he owned mutual fund shares; Smith Barney, his brokerage firm; First Federal Savings & Loan of Rochester, N.Y., which held his home mortgage; and his sister's law firm.

Alito ruled in a 2002 case in Vanguard's favor at a time when he owned between $390,000 and $975,000 in mutual fund shares from Vanguard.

He withdrew from the case after a complaint was filed by Shantee Maharaj, a Massachusetts woman who wanted Vanguard to give her the assets of her late husband's mutual funds.

Nonetheless, he wrote a letter to the chief circuit judge in 2003 complaining about the effort to remove him from the case. ''I do not believe that I am required to disqualify myself based on my ownership of the mutual fund shares," he wrote.

Why should he complain? Is even the appearance of impartiality too onerous for him?

Last week's absurd, unwarranted and disingenuous call for a closed session of the United States Senate sent me a clear message: Many Democrats have decided to mock the Senate's rules in the name of partisan advantage. For more than three years, the Democrats have abused Senate rules to impede the judicial nomination process. To do this, they used a technique called the filibuster--a refusal to end debate and vote.

I hope that the Senate will conduct Alito's confirmation process with customary courtesy and civility. The process should move toward a January vote in an orderly manner. But if the Democratic minority chooses to obstruct the confirmation process, abuse Senate rules and violate the Constitution, I will not hesitate to put the constitutional option before my colleagues.

It's been something of a mixed bag semi-election day for women in this country who also happen to hold progressive or liberal political views. While the Republicans were handed some pretty tough defeats, women were handed some defeats as well -- sometimes in the same stroke.

Tim Kaine wins the Virginia governor race. Hooray for Democrats. But Tim Kaine is an anti-choice Democrat -- which, with the Alito-wielded axe threatening to drop on Roe in the coming months, suddenly is very important shit indeed.

"I think this is an interesting test case for Democrats to see if you can run a faith-based campaign focused on values and do so as a progressive candidate in a Southern state," Rozell said.

It worked, Rozell said, because of Kaine's frequent mentions that he served as a missionary in Honduras while in law school and his familiarity with the language of religion. "It did not come off as calculated," he said.

So while it's promising that people aren't sucking up more smoke from the radical right, it's not an unqualified victory day by any means.

Now it's worth noting that, while anti-gay marriage efforts are still garneringmuchdeserved attention in the blogosphere, precious little attention is paid to Governor-elect Kaine's views against women's reproductive rights.

The presumption is that Alito is primed to rule against Roe. Whether he would or wouldnâ€™t, the Democrats are prepared to oppose him.
But what if they did something utterly unpredictable? What if the Democrats simply decided to walk away from this particular battle, a tactical retreat that no Republican in their right mind (pun intended) expects? What if, yes, the Democrats decided that to let those proverbial chips fall where they may, and allow for the possibility that the Supreme Court just might overturn Roe and declare that there is no constitutional right to abortion.

The Democrats would be far better off.

That is, except for the female Democrats (and female Republicans and independents and Greens and....).

To begin with, letâ€™s once again lay to rest a popular canard: overturning Roe would not, repeat would not, make abortion illegal. That simple truth ainâ€™t so simple. In fact, if you stopped ten people on the streets of New York and Los Angeles, where itâ€™s fair to say support for Roe runs high, high, high, seven, eight, or even nine would say that if Supremes overturn Roe, weâ€™re back to the days of dark alleys and wire hangers.

Not true.

If Roe disappears, very little changes - at first. Roe enshrines a federal, constitutional right to privacy, which in turn bars state legislatures from passing laws making abortion illegal. Before Roe, nothing stood in the way of states making abortion legal. Post Roe, nothing would change in the Blue States.

Where this guy gets this, I don't know. Fact is that over 20 states have standing abortion bans on the books, held in limbo only by Roe.

He then goes on to the tired old argument that having to fight more vigorously for women's right to their own bodies would actually be good because it would put the Democrats on the offensive.

Unfortunately, this issue is a third rail for the left, a cow so sacred that even this mere mention of retreating on Roe triggers, shall we say, sharp reactions.

Yeah, because sacrificing women's lives in the name of cold-blooded political calculus -- especially when it's advocated by a man who will never have to face pregnancy, aborted or not -- is pretty fucking cruel.

And if you don't think it's a big deal, then I recommend you check out tonight's Frontline report (available online in full 5pm EST Wednesday) and see what Republicans and Democrats have been doing to erode women's reproductive rights and options.

"He basically said . . . that Roe was precedent on which people -- a lot of people -- relied, and been precedent now for decades and therefore deserved great respect," Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) told reporters after meeting with Alito yesterday. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she had a similar conversation about an hour later with Alito, who has made clear that he personally opposes abortion.

"I asked him whether it made a difference to him if he disagreed with the initial decision but it had been reaffirmed several times since then," Collins told reporters. "I was obviously referring to Roe in that question. He assured me that he has tremendous respect for precedent and that his approach is to not overturn cases due to a disagreement with how they were originally decided."

Collins, Lieberman and others cautioned that they did not directly ask Alito if he would vote to overturn Roe , and that his comments should not be seen as a guarantee of how he may rule. But the conversations appear to be building Alito's resistance to what might be the biggest impediment to his confirmation: liberals' claims that he is a threat to legalized abortion, which most Americans support, according to opinion polls.

As a moderate Republican who supports abortion rights, Collins is viewed as pivotal to any serious bid to block Alito. She is a member of the bipartisan "Gang of 14," which has agreed to oppose a filibuster unless the nomination involves "extraordinary circumstances." After meeting with Alito, Collins said: "At this point, I see no basis for invoking 'extraordinary circumstances' and for anyone to mount a filibuster."

Your elected representatives have weighed the man, and found him acceptable on the basis of "respect" for Roe.

However, pro-life advocates say Alito, who has been nominated to replace retiring pro-abortion Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, would be likely to overturn Roe and are not concerned about his comments saying he respects Supreme Court precedent.

â€œWhere he's had some wiggle room to examine the fact and apply facts to the law, he's shown a propensity to allow states to regulate abortion," says Hausknecht of Focus on the Family Action.

Most pro-life groups support Alito and say that he had to follow Supreme Court precedent as an appeals court judge but would be free to overturn cases like Roe if confirmed to the high court. They expected Alito to give similar responses as Chief Justice John Roberts, who explained in detail how and why long-standing Supreme Court precedents could be overturned.

Yet a few pro-lifers point to cases in which Alito did not rule in a pro-life direction. I believe their criticism rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of judgesâ€™ proper role.

Alito, nicknamed â€œScalitoâ€? for the similarity between his judicial philosophy and that of current Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, is Catholic and married with two children. He would be the fifth Catholic on the Supreme Court, putting Catholics in the majority on the court for the first timeâ€”though one of those Catholics, Justice Anthony Kennedy, issues rulings that have nothing to do with the Catholic faith, the Constitution, or anything other than the opinions of the fashionable elite people that his weak mind finds itself among.

Judge Samuel Alito's former colleagues say the Supreme Court nominee will move the court to the right, but stop short of overturning Roe v. Wade -- a view shared by many pro-life organizations.

The issue, such groups say, is that even with Alito on the Court, there likely would not be a majority of justices opposed to Roe. But Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America, said a high court with Alito in the mix would succeed in chipping away at abortion rights.

"What you do have, if you add Alito to the court, would be five votes to uphold a ban on partial-birth abortion," she told Family News in Focus.

News accounts in recent days have cited several decisions in which Alito appears to side with abortion advocates, but Focus on the Family Action Judicial Analyst Bruce Hausknecht said that was while the judge was bound by Supreme Court precedent.

"Where he's had some wiggle room to examine the fact and apply facts to the law," Hausknecht explained, "he's shown a propensity to allow states to regulate abortion."

Up until now, Republicans who don't fully buy into the rabid dog pro-criminalization agenda of the radical right have had to just shut up and pretend not to believe that a woman has a right to her own body.

The so-called "social conservatives" were probably counting on that when they called for an all-out culture war over the nomination of Samuel Alito. They hope to cow the majority of Americans who support reproductive rights while they embark on a concerted effort to get Alito confirmed.

ST. LOUIS - Former Gov. Christie Whitman called on moderate Republicans on Thursday to become more vocal within the party as she helped launch a new chapter of a GOP group that supports abortion rights.

Whitman said she fears the far right has too much power in her party, which she wants to return to core principles such as "the restriction of government intrusion into our everyday lives."

I confess I like Whitman. I lived in New York when she was governor of New Jersey, and got the sense that she was doing okay ... at least for a state that has such messed-up politics.

Her quitting Bush's EPA over principle also earned some of my respect.

Now her push on reproductive rights -- another voice in what I hope is a political trend to take undamental human and civil rights for women out of the distorting lens of party politics. I've always thought that the dominionist Republicans' neo-fascist ambitions were an odd mix with the corporatist Republicans' anti-regulation agenda -- unless we're talking nostalgia for the Victorian days portrayed in Dickens' Hard Times.

Whitman lent her support to the new chapter of the Republicans for Choice Committee, which is part of an effort by Republicans and Planned Parenthood to increase support for abortion rights within the party. The committee also supports funding for family planning programs and age-appropriate sex education.

Expect this Planned Parenthood endeavor to draw the embittered enmity of staunch Democratic Party supporters, especially those who've been asserting that any Democrat, even one of the "Democrats for Life," will back reproductive rights more than any Republican, even a pro-choice Republican. But given how wobbly and unreliable the Democrats have become on reproductive rights, I for one am glad that Planned Parenthood has joined NARAL in seeking out allies on both sides of the aisle. Let's hope this helps the silent majority find their voices and speak out against the extremists in their party.

John Hancock, a spokesman for the Missouri Republican Party, said he wasn't concerned about disagreement among party members over abortion rights.

"We are the majority party in America, and our two-party system necessitates a divergence of viewpoints within each political party," Hancock said. "We welcome the support of pro-choice Republicans and value the support of our pro-life Republicans as well."

I believe this is called having your cake and eating it, too. The intolerance of the "pro-life" position, which would bring politicians and the government into private medical decisions, would seem to preclude any acknowledgment, let alone acceptance, of pro-reproductive rights folks into the dialogue, let alone into their ranks. That's about as likely as the racial integration of the KKK.